After nearly two years of rehearsals and recording, James Hill is releasing Uke Heads, a 10-song album "full of connection and feeling" (Ukulele Magazine), recorded at his studio in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, with contributions from 165 players and singers from 15 countries.

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Make no mistake: this album sounds nothing like the campfire sing-along you might imagine. Instead, it's full of fuzzed-out ukulele, driving rhythms and big riffs à la Black Keys or White Stripes.

 

The raucous energy on songs like "Summertime" and "Hearts on Fire" is perfectly balanced by occasional detours into jazz ("Solid Gold"), sound collage ("Intermission"), flights of psychedelia ("O, Cecilia") and epic sing-alongs ("Lie Di Die," "Lucky in Love," and "The Night").

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How did this all happen? In May 2022, Hill invited anyone to play and sing with him on his new album. He proposed a novel approach to crowdfunding: fans could purchase pieces of digital art (created by Hill), each of which would serve as a ticket to play on the recording. A fan's unique art piece would also serve as their identity in the online community that formed around the project.

 

Participants attended monthly rehearsals, practiced their parts, then recorded themselves singing and playing. Hill mixed the album himself, blending more than 100 layers of audio per song, a musical balancing act made all-the-more impressive by the fact that "the lead vocal and ukulele are always present without minimizing the contributions of the rest of the band." (Ukulele Magazine)